The Runaway Highlander (The Highland Renegades Book 2) (13 page)

That kiss.

It had taken her every potential ounce of willpower to pull away from him. At first, she’d thought it would be easy to use his attraction against him, but she hadn’t considered that she might have wanted that kiss as much as he had.

After Simon Alcock, she wasn’t sure she’d ever want to kiss another man again. But the fire she felt around Aedan surprised her.

The memory of it played over and over in her head. Her breathless response, his growling into her mouth like he would possess her, the overwhelming sea of desire that had threatened to wash her away.

Most of all, her want. She hadn’t thought she wanted him, not like that, and the fact that she had used their budding interest to overpower him left her feeling hollow and used.

And the first time she’d ever stabbed a man, it had to have been the man she was falling in love with.

No. Not falling in love. Want. Something between them had certainly grown, and she’d known it was there from the first she saw him, she had to admit. But that wasn’t love. She couldn’t have done what she’d done if it was really love.

Stabbed him. Left him.

That was something Milene de Cheyne would do.

She would go back for him. Once she’d warned Broccin and she would bring Aedan with her. Maybe he could join de Moray’s men and become part of the resistance to the occupation.

She
shouldn’t have stabbed him. Regret tore through her. She had to go back.

Anne pulled her horse to a stop. On the horizon, she spotted two riders. For a short moment, she couldn’t decide what to do. If she turned back now, she might make it back to Aedan before they overtook her, but not likely. If she turned and they were after her, they would follow her. Catch her.

She wasn’t a good enough rider to push this horse to his full capacity, she was certain. She couldn’t outrun anyone. If only she hadn’t dropped Aedan’s dagger after she’d cut her bonds.

The riders could be the Sheriff’s men, and then she would rather be at Aedan’s side than alone. They might just be men out for a ride. Before she could think of anything further, she recognized one of the riders. It wasn’t an enemy after all, but Broccin Sinclair.

With a ragged breath, she urged the horse forward. At least she could discharge her duty and be done with it.

She waved to Broccin and the two riders slowed. The distance between them became smaller and smaller until she could
see them waving. Stupid men, of course she could see them. They looked at each other and spurred their horses on, continuing to wave their arms. Before long, they were close enough, she could hear their voices. They both yelled in tandem to her.

“Behind you!”
and “Look behind you!”

Anne turned just as an arm was about to pluck her from her horse, riding at top speed behind her. She reined the horse sharply
to the side. Aedan’s body flew from its mount and landed on the rocky ground several feet away.

Broccin and his
compatriot arrived and the other man grabbed the reins of the free horse while Broc jumped from the saddle and pulled at the bit of Anne’s horse.

“Are you safe?” He took her arm and yanked her down from the saddle. “What happened?”

Anne, tears still wet on her cheeks, realized she must have looked a mess. “No, I’m fine. I’m fine.” She pointed to Aedan. “My mother hired a man to come after me, believing I had been kidnapped.”

Broccin drew his sword and stalked over to Aedan. When he released her arm with such force, she stumbled for a moment, then ran after him and threw herself between Broc and Aedan.

Anne knelt in front of Aedan’s bent torso and shielded him with her body. “Please, don’t hurt him. I know this man. He is a Scot and a good man.”

Broc was seething and grabbed at her arm again to push her aside, but she wrenched away from him.

“Please believe me, Broc. He is a good man. Please.” She laid her body over his and he groaned. “I promise you. He means us no harm.”

Broc rested the point of his sword on the ground and studied them. When she moved off Aedan’s body, Broc’s mouth held in an open ‘O’.

“If he means us no harm, then who stabbed him?”

She lowered her eyes and felt the tears threaten again. “I stabbed him, but it was an accident.”

“You accidentally almost killed him?” Broc pulled her aside and put his hand on the wound. “Not much farther down and you would have, even without meaning to.”

“He just…” she pushed at frustrated tears with her palm. “He wouldn’t let me come back to you, so I stabbed him.”

Broc took in a breath. “Oh, Anne.” He signaled to his compatriot and the other man came to look at Aedan’s body as well.

“Do you have any bandages in your saddle bags?” Broc asked.

The man foraged in his pack and pulled out a roll of ancient-looking bandages. “Will these do?”

Broc
lifted Aedan from the ground and looked at his back. “It didn’t go deep, and didn’t go through. He should be fine if we can stop the bleeding.”

“How did you find me?” Anne asked. She tore pieces of her skirt while Broc pressed the bandages to the wound.

“When we saw your horse had been left, we knew something had happened. So we followed your horses. McKay is an excellent tracker.” He thumbed his friend who handed him more fabric from his saddle bags. “Not your shirt, McKay. This will be enough.”

Anne pressed the shirt into the wound and Aedan groaned, opening his eyes. She placed the piece of her dress under his shoulder and tied it over the bandage to keep it in place.

“The wound isn’t very deep.” Broccin wiped his hands on his tunic and sat back on his heels.

“She isn’t very strong.” Aedan’s voice cracked, but Anne started at the sound. She put her hand on his stomach and leaned over him.

“Aedan.” She felt like kissing him again. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I have a wound in my shoulder that says otherwise.” He sat up and Broccin offered him a hand as they both got to their feet.

Anne sat on the ground between them as Aedan leaned on Broc for support.

“Thank you for the dressing.” He pointed to his shoulder and grunted. “It may not be deep, but it slowed me long enough. Just as you desired, my lady.”

She cast her eyes to the ground. The guilt ate at her. She could have just kept kissing him and Broc would have come across her eventually. She didn’t need to stab the man.

And continuing to kiss him would have been beautiful.

“Anne said you wouldn’t allow her to return to us.”

Aedan stepped back from Broccin, his knees slightly bent as though expecting a fight. “Her mother sent me after her. She thought you’d captured her against her will.”

“And he meant to return me, regardless.”

Broccin studied the man who stood across from him. Anne could see in his face that he hadn’t made up his mind yet. He was still too curious to be fully angry.

“Why would you return her?”

“To her own mother?” Aedan asked. He spread his hands and shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I can think of at least one reason.” Broccin held up his finger and stared at it as though it were the man himself. “The Sheriff.”

Aedan shook his head. “Why? Does he have some price on her head?”

“A bride price.” Broccin spat on the ground, away from where Anne sat. A tiny warmth bubbled inside that he would so completely take her side. So completely believe her. Of course, he’d seen the Sheriff’s handiwork with his own eyes.

Aedan’s eyes rounded. “A bride price?”

“The Sheriff means to marry her.”

With closed eyes, Aedan expelled a deep breath. “You mean her mother sold her to him?”

“In essence. It is done.”

Aedan’s eyes remained closed and his head shook slowly from side to side. “But Milene de Cheyne no longer holds a place of honor in his house.”

Anne started. “What?” She pulled herself to her feet. “How do you know this?”

“She wasn’t dressed and at court when I came across her. In fact, all the nobles had assembled and another woman sat in your mother’s place. And others in yours and your sister’s chairs, as well. Your mother hunted me down after I’d left the great hall, and, now that I think of it, was dressed in traveling clothes. She didn’t wear the finery of her previous appearances. That I did notice.”

Anne pondered this. Her mother, out of the Sheriff’s favor. That could mean any number of things.

“Your mother seemed genuinely concerned to see you returned to her.” Aedan stretched and the curtain of hair slid back from his face for a moment. Anne remembered the feel of that scar against her lips, the edges so hard where his mouth was otherwise so soft, so warm, so inviting.

She found herself staring at that mouth and shook herself back to the moment.

“So you followed her all the way here because her mother sent you?”

Aedan nodded. “She wanted me to arrive before the Sheriff’s men.”

Broc stiffened. “The Sheriff’s men?”

“The Sheriff knows where to find your camp.” Aedan’s eyes darkened. “I was to retrieve Anne before they attacked so she wouldn’t be hurt.”

Broccin studied him with wary eyes. Anne found herself wanting to protect Aedan from that glare.

“He knows the location of our camp? Or he knows how to find it?” Broccin’s voice was low and careful.

“He knows how to find it.”

Broc sprang into immediate action. “McKay!” he called. “We must return to camp immediately.”

Anne, confused by the sudden rush, pulled at Broc’s arm. “You have to take me with you.”

Broc glowered at Aedan, then shifted his focus back to her. “If the Sheriff’s men attack, you cannot be there.”

“But the Sheriff…” she began.

He shook his head with a finality that sent chills to her very soul. “It would appear your encounter in the castle made enough of an impression that the Sheriff has cast your family aside.”

“Broccin…”

“Anne, I can’t.” He took her by the shoulders. “Don’t you understand? I have to protect Andrew. And Lachlan. I must return him alive to my wife.” A deep thrum of emotion passed through him. “I cannot return with her father dead.”

He kissed her forehead and swung onto his horse. “I cannot promise to protect you, Anne, and I will not bring you to the camp to die. Aedan
has been paid to protect you. He will return you to your mother and see you safely home.” Broc’s fair head turned to Aedan for confirmation. Her scarred captor nodded.

“I must return before the soldiers find the camp.” With that, Broccin kicked his horse and rode off the way he came with McKay nearly in his dust.

Aedan glanced at Anne and his eyes held hers with a savagery that chilled her blood. “You are mine, now.”

Chapter Ten

“You’re nothing better than a common mercenary.”

Aedan rolled his eyes heavenward and secured the rope
around her slight body and the sturdy tree. Double-knotted this time. “Actually, I prefer opportunist.”

“You may prefer whatever you please. It doesn’t change the fact that you plan to take money from my
mother in exchange for kidnapping me.” Anne wriggled against the ropes, but made no progress. He pulled the knots again, just to be sure. She wouldn’t be going anywhere this time.

His shoulder twinged
. All the struggling had aggravated his wound. He’d be lucky not to be bleeding.

“I prefer to think of it as returning lost property. You run away. I find you.”

Her laugh was short, pointed, like the cut of a sword. “You find me, I wound you, I escape.”

Pressing his lips together to avoid indecorous speech, Aedan leaned down so his face was mere inches from hers. “You escape, I find you.
” He hardened his gaze. “I will always find you.”

The words hung between them in breathless silence. He wanted to do something to punctuate that promise, but the only thing that sprung to mind was kissing those back
-talking lips of hers. That would be more than indecorous. Not to mention complicated.

Luxurious, he
remembered. The speed of her tongue had to translate into some skill other than blathering. She was a magnificent kisser.

Though he had the wound to prove it, which would hopefully make him think twice the next time.

No, there would be no next time. He wouldn’t allow her close enough for next time.

“Surely you can’t mean to leave me tied like this all
day.” Anne continued to struggle vainly against the bonds, but her shoulders thunked against the thick tree with each new thrust.

“We’re not staying here all
day.” Aedan untied her horse and his and led them both down to the edge of the nearby river, where he anchored them with enough slack to have a good long drink before they traveled again.

“I only mean to rest here a moment.
We will travel as soon as I am certain the bleeding has stopped.” Aedan rolled up his extra cloak and set it against a tree deeper into the little copse, then lay across the ground so he could see her, the horses, and the road, all in one glance. “You should sleep now, because you won’t be able to sleep in the saddle. I need to rest, of course, because someone stabbed me in the shoulder.”

She
made a buzzing sound of protest with her lips, but did not speak.

Whether she waited for a better opening
to escape or she really couldn’t sleep with a tree at her back, he didn’t know. Nor did he care. She’d called him a mercenary. And maybe he was one. But only for one woman and one situation.

Once he returned her to Berwick, his mercenary days were behind him for good.

Aedan’s dreams came rushing to his wakeful memory as soon as he opened his eyes. The sun was past its high point and one glance rested his nerves. Anne sat against the tree with her eyes closed, hopefully sleeping, and the horses stood near the river, still tied.

The scenes that had played through his mind during sleep hadn’t been quite so scenic or idyllic. This had been the third night in a row he’d dreamed of fighting in a battle to rescue his sister. It had been a bloody clash with faceless people, but gave him a start no less. He wanted this life of violence to be behind him.

Much as he wanted his sister to be safe, he was finished with blood and wounds and fighting and stabbing. He just wanted to deliver this package and save Brighde from her mother’s fate.

Aedan sat against the tree for a long moment, watching Anne sleep. There had been a time in his life when he would have wished for a woman like this. And perhaps a part of him still did. But her mother was right. A woman of such beauty could never love him. That made him perfect for this job, but
would likely be the constant torture of his life.

Wanting to be loved. Never being loved.

Was it possible for that to be a man’s destiny? To be disfigured and cast aside? Or was there a God out there who would show him mercy? Aedan had never been much for that emotional side of religion the way his sister was. He didn’t feel God or cry out to God. And he’d never really been a praying man.

But that day, watching Anne in her peaceful slumber, he couldn’t help whispering a hurried prayer. He wanted her to love him, maybe more than he’d ever wanted anything. While her betrayal had stung, it had only made their kiss that much sweeter.

If that was to be his last and only kiss, though, it would imprint a memory on Aedan’s mind that would never fade.

He stood and stretched, taking his things down to the river to store away in the saddle bag. He pulled the horses back up to where Anne slept and after divesting himself of all weapons, he tied the horses to the tree where he’d slept and moved to wake her.

*****

Anne woke to a sore back, but settled down into her bonds with quiet resignation. She snuggled back against the tree and leaned her head against the side to relieve the pressure on her back. She felt warmer and wondered if the sun had come around.

But when she opened her eyes, the world moved in front of her. At first, she was disoriented, but when she realized she was moving, she shook herself awake.

They were cante
ring down a long hill at an angle, cutting across open country. The sun was at their back, although she couldn’t feel it. She could only tell by her shadow. Their shadow. For she was actually seated in Aedan’s saddle, between Aedan’s arms, on Aedan’s horse.

The tree at her back wasn’t a tree at all, it was Aedan’s chest. She nearly burned up in embarrassment. She shouldn’t have been moving so suggestively against him. What would he take her for?

“Where are we?” Her voice was scratchy from sleep, still. How she must sound. And smell. She’d been wearing the same dress for two days and even she could tell she needed a wash.

“We’re about an hour past Lowich. I’m impressed you didn’t wake when I moved you from your tree. You must have needed the sleep.” His voice was so close to her ear, but then, if his chest was at her back, it would only make sense that his mouth would be close to her. The very thought made her shiver.

“We are not taking the King’s road?”

Aedan snorted and the air breezed past her ear, tickling the sensitive flesh there and tingling something from inside.

“Can you just imagine what would happen if we did?” Aedan shifted her to one side so she could turn her shoulders and look up at him. “A deformed man carrying a beautiful noblewoman, bound, on his horse with fifty silver coins in his pocket?”

She let that sink in for a moment and laughed at the notion. “You are not deformed.”

He snorted and shifted her back to face forward. “Don’t deceive yourself, my lady.” A pause almost had her answering back, before he added, “And don’t deceive me, either.”

That shut her up.

The look in his eyes when she’d stabbed him flew back into her memory. The pain and betrayal. He likely could have taken a hundred stab wounds, knowing his strength. But he had been at her command as soon as her lips met his, and she knew it. She could have had anything she wanted in that moment.

Except to continue to kiss him forever,
a thought which flitted through her mind with alarming speed. But instead, she’d stabbed him. And now he would always be waiting for that move. The deception. The Judas kiss.

“I am sorry, Aedan.” That was all she could offer. Otherwise, she had no words. He knew why she’d done it, so there was no excuse and no justification. And it had all been worthless.

When given the chance, Broccin did not help her. He had his own family to care for, to protect, to worry about, and no time for hangers-about—no matter how old the friendship.

If she hadn’t been so angry at him for abandoning her to Aedan, she might have been able to see his perspective and forgive him. But to Anne, this daughter of Lachlan, this wife of Broccin, she was nothing. What did matter was Elena.

“You should not apologize. I am a mercenary, as you so notably pointed out.” Aedan clucked at the horse and they moved a little more quickly once in the flat land of the valley.

“You are so much more than that.”

“No, I am not. I was paid a good deal of money by your mother to return you to Berwick and I negotiated with your former captors to secure your release into my power. This is all.”

Anne pouted against him, wishing her arms were free.
She wanted to punch his smug face.

“I’m trying to apologize to you.”

“Stop.” This time, his voice was more than commanding. There was an edge of desperation there as well. “There is no need to apologize. You did what you had to do to escape. But now you are my captive and I don’t need to wait for you to come to your senses. I can simply take you to your mother.”

She paused, the tickle of tears rising behind her eyes.
Anne wanted so much to have him forgive her. Such a small thing. She tried to shake off the sadness that crept up as he put more formality between them.

“Do you really think that my mother has been cast aside?”

He breathed in her ear for a moment and she leaned back into the breath, loving the tickle of his hot words against her ear. “Were you really promised to the Sheriff?”

“I am promised to him.”

“So it was not your mother who intended to bed or wed him?”

Anne laughed. “My father lives still!”

“How could he allow her to act as she did in public? In full view of other nobles, and in a public court, no less?” He sighed and that lovely feeling rumbled through her belly. “I would never allow a wife of mine such liberty.”

A delicious warmth spread through her and she smiled. What, she wondered, would it be like to be married to a man like this? Someone so strong and so fierce. Someone who saw a precious thing when he looked at her, and not a path to her parents’ money—what little there was, in reality.

“My father cares little for what my mother does.” Anne shifted against him and craned up to look in his eyes. “They have been living separate lives for longer than I can remember.”

“I wouldn’t tolerate that, either.”

She shrugged and leaned against his good shoulder. “You can’t control a woman like that. She is the most selfish creature I have ever encountered.”

“I would teach her humility.”

“She would never marry a man like you.”

“Meaning? What? I’m too brutish for her? Too ugly?”

“Do not put words in my mouth.” She turned her head until she could see the cut of his jaw. “I would never say that.”

“Aloud.”

“Aedan.”

“What do you mean, then? A man like me?”

They reached the end of the valley, where the river crossed back in front of them, and he steered the horses into the water and pulled them up, then let them drink.

“I mean a man who is strong and has the capacity for love.” She stared off toward the other side of the low, slow river, where trees lined the bank and a dusting of purple flowers led up the hillside.

She carried a powerful memory, one of her earliest, of her father and mother sitting at table to break fast. He had come in from the stable and Milene had come down from her library. The children had been brought by their nurse. Anne had been so excited to see their father, having been separated from him for so many days.

They all waited for him to speak, having not seen him for days, but he slurped up his breakfast and returned to the stables without a word or a look to anyone. He cared less about his wife than his horses, and only marginally more for his children, when he had to.
But she couldn’t imagine Aedan being like her father.

A powerful silence passed between them. She’d just given him a compliment, and she felt it land, but to say more would open more than just her past to him.

“You know nothing of me.” His voice wavered. She knew she’d hit on something important. She remembered his talk of his sister. He cared for her more than his own life.

“Very well,” she admitted. “I know nothing of you. But my status as the Sheriff’s fiancé
e is, to the best of my knowledge, still intact and expected.”

“Then why would your mother have been cast out and ready to travel?”

“These are questions I can’t answer.”

“We will find out when we reach Berwick.”

Anne shuddered. No matter how hard she tried, each time someone mentioned the town of Berwick, she saw the Sheriff’s face. And worse. She heard his grunting, smelled his sweat, felt his teeth, tasted her own blood on his lips.

And then she saw herself falling from the castle tower.

And falling, and falling.

But Aedan was convinced that he had to return her to her mother, and nothing she could say seemed to change his mind. She considered, for just a moment, telling him about the Sheriff’s accosting her in the courtyard.

Her hand went, absently, to her neck, where her hair covered the wound the Sheriff had given her. She hadn’t even shown that to Broc, afraid he would do something rash—which had been an unnecessary worry, given how easily he’d left her to Aedan.